I don’t like giving authors bad reviews, and I don’t like giving up on books before they’re complete, but this was bad enough that I felt compelled to do both.
The big glaring complaint; this isn’t litrpg. It’s barely even gamelit. This is a romance novel first and foremost, with the barest mentions of game mechanics here and there. Maybe they’re all in the last half of the book, I dunno, I quit at chapter 26. It just never took off, and I finally realized that it was a chore to keep listening. The entire plot revolves around a woman who wants to have sex with a demon, and refuses to admit that to herself unless drunk or very tired. Gamelits are supposed to be about the games, the mechanics, the rules that operate these worlds, and the world building itself. Not a janky romance story that takes an eternity to actually progress. Slow Burn romance I think they call it. All I got from it was a severely unhealthy look at courtship, and a mega frustrating repeated storyline. It was the same elements over and over and over, admiring the demon kings muscles and then “putting on her bitch pants” to fend off his advances because….I don’t even know anymore. I honestly began to wonder if the character knew why she didn’t want to get involved after a certain point. The game elements I did see were slapdash and tertiary. Barely acknowledged and not really interesting. Pretty stock standard mmo stuff, felt like it couldn’t decide if it wanted to be portal fantasy or vrmmo. The honest impression I got from this book was a romance novelist trying her hand in another genre. If so, I’m sorry to be discouraging, I just don’t think this is a good fit. When I read Gamelit or Litrpg, its to enjoy the passion the author has for the gameworld they are creating, and I felt that was severely lacking in this book. I feel more than a little cheated, I signed up to read a gamelit story, not a romance. The write up on the store page is super misleading. Yes all those elements exist, no they are most assuredly not the primary focus.